Straube grand (story attached)

[Clyde Hollinger]

Ron and list, 

I service one of these.  I wish I knew its age but I couldn't find a
serial number anywhere.  The pinblock is shot, and overall it's got a
lot of needs.  The family also has a nice Yamaha P2 studio piano, and I
suggested to the wife they may want to sell the two pianos and buy a
nice grand. She told me this story.

The husband is a youngish attorney and and auctioneer.  He bought this
grand one time at an auction because it sold for so much less than he
thought it was worth.  Some time later his first wife was killed, hit by
a car while jogging along the road.  To console himself the
grief-stricken attorney would sit at this piano and play.  His second
wife told me there is no way the family will ever part with that piano,
regardless of its condition, because of the role it played in her
husband's life.

I don't remember if I mentioned to them the possibility of a rebuild. 
It looks like it would cost considerably more, with the three planes of
strings.

Clyde Hollinger

Ron Nossaman wrote:
> 
> Interesting day today. I petted three dogs, eight cats (that's "eight", not
> "ate"), and two ferrets, met four left handed people, and tuned (among
> others) a Straube grand. You'll have to deal with your own livestock, but
> the Straube was a new one on me. It was a four foot something-or-barely with
> three bridges. The bass and tenor bridges were in relatively normal and
> expected places, but the third bridge was like an extension to the low end
> of the bass bridge, and was behind the tenor with it's strings running
> between the tenor and bass string planes! That's three layers of strings at
> the crossover. The bass was entirely monochords (about a dozen) and at an
> extreme angle to the belly bar. I assume that's why they were all
> monochords, I don't think you could have gotten any bichords in there at
> that angle without the hammers hitting adjacent strings. The transition
> bridge had two monochords, presumably to acoustically blend the transition
> (didn't work), and another four or so bichords. The low tenor bridge had the
> beloved hockey stick curve at the end with another three or four bichords
> before the plain trichords started. Altogether, it didn't sound or tune any
> better or worse than any other funky little grand. It was sort of tubby and
> clangy, all at once, but it was sure weird looking. Has anyone else seen on
> of these? How many of them are out there?
>  Ron